On Monday, Barbie turned 50. Groan you may, but I’m a big fan. Barbie spurs far more use of imagination and activity than today’s television-computer-cell phone world that kids live in. –Barbie is a blank canvas. She comes with no pre-scripting. To a young girl who dreams of growing up to do something great or be something special, she is that white sheet of paper upon which an artist projects her dreams. She's the ultimate career woman, since she comes with such possibility, and you make her your own.
My Barbie was the Indiana Jones of plastic dolls. She was rarely inside the Dream House. She drove a pink jeep, pink speedboat and even had a plastic safari hat. She went pearl diving and mountain climbing (up the cascading bedspread) – having to fight the great bear at the top. All before schmoozing at her evening gala, dancing in a performance, or playing her rock show (or getting married for the umpteenth time to the same noncommittal man). My Barbie was well worn and loved, with ratty hair and missing shoes.
While I didn’t grow up to do nearly any of those things, Barbie can teach us something. Twenty different girls or boys can start with the same thing, the same bent-arm half-smiling plastic doll girl, and end up with twenty different women. We’re a lot like that too. We all start with basically the same body, and we can choose how we want to dress ourselves, what we want to do and how we want to present ourselves.
1. The first step of magick is goal setting. Anyone will tell you that the first step is desire, not just desire but the overwhelming desire in every cell of you that wants what you want. It is conviction paired with willingness to work. This isn’t Cinderella wishing to her fairy godmother to become a princess. The reason many don’t believe in magick is that they expect it to be like that.
2. To start spellcrafting for yourself, you need to see yourself as a canvas, a work-in-progress painting, that is missing something. Then you need to decide what that something is.
3. Then you need to commit to achieving it.
Magick is paired with planning and work. They’re the mundane details no one talks about that always appear in successful spells. If you perform magick for your career, then you pair it with sending out resumes and working for your business deals and constantly seeking success. If you perform magick for love, you perform a spell opening yourself to love and seeking it and actively going out to find love and loving people.
Ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?
I understand the argument against Barbie, that she suggests an unrealistic and unhealthy standard of beauty.
I recall being in a fitting room and I heard a conversation from a woman and her little girl in the spot next to me. By the sound of the girl’s voice, she was maybe four.
Mom: “How does mommy look?”
Girl: “You look beautiful.”
Mom: “Ugh. You don’t think mommy needs to lose some weight?”
Girl: “I need to lose weight.”
Mom: (humoring her) “Oh, you think you do? How much weight do you think you need to lose?”
Girl: “Like, a pound.”
Maybe, call me crazy, but maybe girls get their body image from hearing everyone bash their own selves. This conversation says two things to me: 1. her mom obviously says this kind of crap all the time (about herself, not her daughter, I’m sure) and 2. the girl clearly has no concept of what a pound is or what losing weight means, only that her mom gripes about it all the time and doesn’t think she’s beautiful.
Can’t we take the child’s approach and just see a woman as beautiful, and not judge it down to the nth degree? Revel in what the Goddess gives? Don’t get me wrong, if you want to make yourself better, I’m all for that, and you do that for you, and to HONOR the Goddess and you decorate the temple she has in you. Doesn't that seem far more productive and positive than having so much anger at someone else outside of yourself, or yourself?
Can’t we just embrace play and have adventures and not read into what pure joy really means? Isn’t that what play, be it a Barbie doll or anything else, really is?
Tomorrow is the last day of work before the weekend. It is also Freyja’s Day. I’m going to spend it feeling creative, feeling beautiful, and feeling damn adventurous. Viva la Barbie.
My Barbie was the Indiana Jones of plastic dolls. She was rarely inside the Dream House. She drove a pink jeep, pink speedboat and even had a plastic safari hat. She went pearl diving and mountain climbing (up the cascading bedspread) – having to fight the great bear at the top. All before schmoozing at her evening gala, dancing in a performance, or playing her rock show (or getting married for the umpteenth time to the same noncommittal man). My Barbie was well worn and loved, with ratty hair and missing shoes.
While I didn’t grow up to do nearly any of those things, Barbie can teach us something. Twenty different girls or boys can start with the same thing, the same bent-arm half-smiling plastic doll girl, and end up with twenty different women. We’re a lot like that too. We all start with basically the same body, and we can choose how we want to dress ourselves, what we want to do and how we want to present ourselves.
1. The first step of magick is goal setting. Anyone will tell you that the first step is desire, not just desire but the overwhelming desire in every cell of you that wants what you want. It is conviction paired with willingness to work. This isn’t Cinderella wishing to her fairy godmother to become a princess. The reason many don’t believe in magick is that they expect it to be like that.
2. To start spellcrafting for yourself, you need to see yourself as a canvas, a work-in-progress painting, that is missing something. Then you need to decide what that something is.
3. Then you need to commit to achieving it.
Magick is paired with planning and work. They’re the mundane details no one talks about that always appear in successful spells. If you perform magick for your career, then you pair it with sending out resumes and working for your business deals and constantly seeking success. If you perform magick for love, you perform a spell opening yourself to love and seeking it and actively going out to find love and loving people.
Ask yourself, what do you want for yourself?
I understand the argument against Barbie, that she suggests an unrealistic and unhealthy standard of beauty.
I recall being in a fitting room and I heard a conversation from a woman and her little girl in the spot next to me. By the sound of the girl’s voice, she was maybe four.
Mom: “How does mommy look?”
Girl: “You look beautiful.”
Mom: “Ugh. You don’t think mommy needs to lose some weight?”
Girl: “I need to lose weight.”
Mom: (humoring her) “Oh, you think you do? How much weight do you think you need to lose?”
Girl: “Like, a pound.”
Maybe, call me crazy, but maybe girls get their body image from hearing everyone bash their own selves. This conversation says two things to me: 1. her mom obviously says this kind of crap all the time (about herself, not her daughter, I’m sure) and 2. the girl clearly has no concept of what a pound is or what losing weight means, only that her mom gripes about it all the time and doesn’t think she’s beautiful.
Can’t we take the child’s approach and just see a woman as beautiful, and not judge it down to the nth degree? Revel in what the Goddess gives? Don’t get me wrong, if you want to make yourself better, I’m all for that, and you do that for you, and to HONOR the Goddess and you decorate the temple she has in you. Doesn't that seem far more productive and positive than having so much anger at someone else outside of yourself, or yourself?
Can’t we just embrace play and have adventures and not read into what pure joy really means? Isn’t that what play, be it a Barbie doll or anything else, really is?
Tomorrow is the last day of work before the weekend. It is also Freyja’s Day. I’m going to spend it feeling creative, feeling beautiful, and feeling damn adventurous. Viva la Barbie.
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